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Bizarre Hollywood deaths!

Bob Crane (1928-78) was best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E. Hogan in the television sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" (1965-71), and for his violent and unsolved death.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. --- It's now looking more likely that the death of actor David Carradine wasn't a suicide, as authorities in Thailand, where the 72-year-old actor was shooting a film, initially reported. Those same authorities are now saying the death could have been accidental.

Don't expect anything definitive on this for weeks, given where this investigation is occurring, but it's sounding more and more like Carradine could've died from a sex act gone awry. People around Carradine have said the actor was anything but despondent, there was no suicide note, his body was found hanging naked in a closet in his hotel room with a rope around his neck and his genitals, and, well, he was in Bangkok.

Carradine's death is a tragedy, of course; the guy was seeing a late resurgence in his acting career, for which he credited the filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who saw fit to put the actor in his "Kill Bill" movies. But a more colorful death does suit a man who led a colorful life.

Showbiz history is rife with unusual, colorful deaths. Looking back on them, however, the stories they tell are nothing but sad.

Topping this bizarro list has to be the demise of "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane, who was found savagely beaten to death in his apartment in 1978. His friend, John Carpenter, was a prime suspect in the murder for years, but was acquitted in the mid-1990s. The 2002 movie "Auto Focus" detailed the seamier side of Hogan's private life (he was a sex addict), and Greg Kinnear deserved an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Crane.

"Saturday Night Live" veteran Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife in his sleep in 1998. She later returned to the scene of the crime and shot herself to death. And then there was Dorothy Stratten, a Playboy Playmate and aspiring actress who in 1980 was tortured and murdered by her husband, who then had sex with her corpse before killing himself.

The name Elizabeth Short may not mean much to you, until you hear her referred to as the Black Dahlia. She was another aspiring actress, whose body was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles in 1947, her body hacked in half at the waist. The murder has never been solved.

For sheer, symbolic drama, however, none did better than Peg Entwhistle (the Hollywood Sign Girl), a silent-film actress who in 1932 jumped to her death off the letter H of the big Hollywood sign. In her suicide note she wrote, "I'm sorry for everything." Would she have been remembered otherwise?